Andrei Vasilevskiy allowed 1 goal on 22 shots for the victory. It's Vasya's first regulation win in nearly a month, and while his save percentage still languishes below the .900 line, he did manage to even his record at 2-2-3 with the win tonight. So, you hope he's been through the worst of it and now we're going to see him really start to live up to his potential from hereon out.

Mike Angelidis, Jonathan Marchessault, and Dalton Smith were the game's three stars. It's been a while since Syracuse absolutely smashed a team like this, and it's a beautiful thing to see the depth of this team come to the forefront and to see such a solid defensive effort limiting a team to 22 shots on goal.

Angelidis, 29, skated in 75 games with the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey League last season, recording 12 goals and 33 points to go along with 161 penalty minutes. He ranked second on the Crunch for penalty minutes and fifth for points. Angelidis has been captain of the Crunch since the beginning of the 2012-13 season.

The Woodbridge, Ontario native has skated in seven career NHL games, all with the Lightning, posting one goal and five penalty minutes. Angelidis scored his first career NHL goal in his NHL debut on January 24, 2012 against the Columbus Blue Jackets at the Tampa Bay Times Forum.

Jonathan Marchessault, Brett Connolly, and Mike Angelidis were the game's three stars. New Crunch forward Henri Ikonen managed his first two AHL points on helpers to bookend the scoring for Syracuse. The 4 point night for Connolly points to him potentially providing some depth options to Tampa Bay in the playoffs as well. As I said after last night's win, this team is figuring out some of its chemistry for next season, and guys like Gourde and Marchessault finding their grooves bodes well for a bounce back next year. The team is back to .500 with 4 games left in the regular season, and if they can finish with a winning record that will be a major accomplishment considering this franchise supplied 9 prospects who became full time NHLers in Tampa Bay this season.

Kristers Gudlevskis allowed 2 goals on 28 shots for the victory. Since returning from the Olympics, Gudlevskis is 4-2-1 with 1 SO, a 1.97 GAA, and a .934 save percentage. Suffice it to say he's really taken off since that amazing performance against Canada in Sochi.

Artem Sergeev, Vladislav Namestnikov, and Mike Angelidis were the game's three stars. Now at 42 points in 46 games, Namestnikov has doubled his point production from a season ago when he had 21 points in 44 games. As with Gudlevskis' numbers, his continued production is impressive given how the rest of the roster has obviously labored a bit this season.

This was a far more impressive result than the 3-0 shutout of Adirondack given the IceCaps reside in 4th in the Eastern Conference at 20 games over .500 for the season. This is a result that gives you far more hope that this winning streak can actually be sustained.

Kristers Gudlevskis allowed 2 goals on 22 shots for the victory. It says something about how well he's performed this season that a +.900 sv% and a win is still a bit subpar by his standards, stat-wise.

Mike Angelidis, Tanner Richard, and Vladislav Namestnikov were the game's three stars. Of note: tonight was Richard's first multi-point game of the season (all assists, naturally). As a junior, he couldn't look in the general direction of a rink without getting a couple of helpers. Hopefully this is a sign Tanner is going to have a big stretch run for the Crunch.

Syracuse has gotten points out of each of their last 6 games, going 4-0-2 in that span. They jumped over the Bears in the standings with the win tonight and are now 3 points back of 8th place in the Eastern Conference. So, as it stands right now, this retooled and suddenly much healthier Syracuse club looks poised to make a serious climb in the East. They'll look to keep momentum tomorrow night against Binghamton.

It should be noted the Syracuse lineup did not include Dana Tyrell or Matt Taormina, both of which were returned by Tampa Bay today, nor did it include the freshly signed and recalled J.P. Cote. So, perhaps tonight's result wasn't all that bad under the circumstances.

Eric Neilson and Mike Angelidis were the game's first and second stars. Things got out of hand in the Third Period (obviously) after Cedric Paquette (who also got his first professional goal in the game) took a Game Misconduct for boarding that led to a pair of Penguins goals that helped flip the outcome.

Wow. I feel like we need to issue a formal apology to all our friends in Norfolk for that savage beat down tonight.

NOR-1
SYR-6

Cedrick Desjardins allowed 1 goal on 27 shots for the victory. For those wondering, Pat Nagle has been backing up Desjardins because Riku Helenius had some family issues back in Finland that required attention. Hopefully Riku will be back for the playoffs.

Tyler Johnson, J.T. Wyman, and Mike Angelidis were the game's three stars. The freshly minted AHL MVP, Johnson, celebrated with an incredible 3 goal, 4 point effort to start off a 3 game weekend set that will be so critical for playoff position.

Brian Lee was +4 in the contest. Several members of the Bolt Prospects message board's heads just exploded after reading that. Mind you, he also took a major for slashing and got kicked out of the game. I would suspect a suspension may follow.

Two games remain in the regular season. Providence toppled Springfield tonight 5-3, which clinches the top seed in the East for Providence. However, with Springfield going down and Syracuse winning, the Crunch now move to within 2 points of the Falcons with a game in hand. The Crunch also expanded their division lead over Binghamton to 3 points after Bingo lost to Manchester tonight. Each team has 2 games left on their schedules, including the head-to-head matchup Sunday. The loss for Norfolk was a particularly bad one with the Admirals, at this moment, in a 4-way tie at 79 points for one of the last 2 playoff spots in the Eastern Conference. How deeply ironic would it be if Syracuse had to face Norfolk in the first round? That prospect looks much more remote after tonight, but it's still at least on the edge of the table right now.

So here's the schedule for Saturday: Springfield draws Adirondack (eliminated from playoff contention), Binghamton gets Hershey (one of the clubs in that 4-way tie), and Syracuse gets Worcester (eliminated from playoff contention). Syracuse can make the division elementary with a win, thereby clinching not less than the 3 seed for the playoffs. Jumping Springfield may be a harder task for the Crunch with the Falcons likely holding the tiebreak at the finish line with a 2 game lead in the regulation win column right now.

Some other accounting issues heading into the end of the regular season:
- Syracuse still leads the AHL in goals scored by 10.
- Tyler Johnson is 8th in the AHL in scoring and Brett Connolly is currently tied for 10th.
- Mark Barberio is in 6th amongst AHL defensemen in scoring.
- Johnson also leads the league in goals by 3 with Connolly tied for 4th.
- Johnson is also 6th in power play goals.
- Connolly is tied for tops in game winning goals.
- Ondrej Palat is tied for 8th in the league in helpers.
- Despite being in Tampa for about a month, Radko Gudas is still 6th in the AHL in penalty minutes.
- Gudas is also still leading the league in +/- with teammates Johnson, Palat, and J.P. Cote all tied for 3rd. Dmitry Korobov is tied for 8th.
- Barberio is 9th in the league in shots on goal.